1. Optimize Your Site for Google RankBrain

Google RankBrain is Google’s first machine learning algorithm. In other words, it measures how you interact with the results on the first page:

As you can see, the happier you make Google’s users, the higher you’ll rank.

Sure, backlinks, keywords and other traditional signals are still important. But RankBrain is quickly taking over.

In fact, Google went on to say that RankBrain was one of their “top 3” ranking signals:

(The other 2 key search engine ranking factors? Links and content).

The question is:

How do you optimize your site for Google RankBrain?

Here are two simple, easy-to-implement tips that are working great for me right now:

First, improve your organic click-through-rate (CTR).

Google RankBrain wants to see that lots of people are clicking on your site in the search results.

That tells Google:

“People LOVE this result. Let’s boost it to the top of the page so it’s easier to find”.

But if people don’t click on your result? Google will drop your site like a stone.

And that’s why optimizing your site for organic CTR is so important.

I have a very cool strategy that you can use to improve your CTR later in this post (SEO strategy #4).

But for now, here’s a quick tip that I recently learned:

One of the EASIEST ways to get more clicks is to add numbers to your title and description tag.

Here’s a real-life example from one of my blog posts:

Research shows that people online are more likely to click on content that contains a number. So when you include a number in your content’s title (and in your meta description), you can increase your CTR super quickly.

Next, improve your bounce rate and “Dwell Time”.

Again, Google RankBrain wants you to publish a piece of content that makes their users happy.

And if users leave your site (also known as a “bounce“) after 3 seconds? That’s a user experience signal that tells Google that people don’t like your content.

Of course, some of these keywords won’t make sense for your business. For example, they may target keywords that your customers don’t search for. Or maybe they’re ranking for ultra competitive keywords that you have no shot of ranking for.

That’s why you want to focus on the keywords that a) your target customer searches for in Google and B) you could create awesome content around.

Speaking of awesome content, our next technique shows you exactly how to do just that.

7. Optimize Your Content to Maximize “Shareability”

Let’s face it: Most content online isn’t worth sharing.

And without shares (especially backlinks), you’re not going to rank in Google.

For example, this post of mine about link building has done really well.

How well? It’s generated over 470,000 visits from social media, forums, blogs and search engines:

(I should point out that the guide’s design and promotion contributed to its success. But it all started with how the content itself was organized. As you probably know, when it comes to SEO, quality content is the foundation)

Specifically, my post follows the actionable tips from this infographic:

Now:

There’s A LOT to digest from this infographic. So let me highlight two tips that are working best for me right now.

First, I use short URLs in almost every blog post.

For example the URL for this post you’re reading is simply: backlinko.com/seo-techniques.

Why?

Short URLs tend to get more clicks. And more clicks=higher rankings (thanks to Google Rankbrain).

Next, I put social share buttons prominently on the page.

You’ve probably noticed that little floating sidebar on the left hand side of this page.

From lots of testing, I’ve found that these icons SIGNIFICANTLY increase the amount of Facebook likes and Tweets that my posts receive.

21. Use The Google Search Console to Get More (Targeted) Traffic

Unlike most SEO software on the market, the data you get Google Search Console comes straight from Google.

That said, there are A LOT of features inside of the software… most of which you won’t need.

So let me show you how to quickly snag more traffic using data you have sitting inside your account right now.

First, login and click on “Performance” in the sidebar:

Next, look for keywords (GSC calls these “queries”) that you already rank for. In other words, keywords that bring you the most impressions:

Then, see how many clicks you get for some of these high-impression terms. If your getting lots of impressions for a certain keyword, and not many clicks, that means that you have A LOT of potential to get traffic for that term.

You just need to boost your rankings for that keyword.

For example, I get A TON of impressions but very few clicks for this keyword (sorry, I can’t reveal the keyword. It’s a good one 🙂 ).

So how can you get your site to rank higher for that keyword?

Here are a few tips:

Improve your Click-Through-Rate. Google searchers probably aren’t clicking on your result as often as the other sites in the first page.

Blimey Brian, I think this is your best post ever! Gonna be coming back and going through each tip one by one!

I really liked what you said about using “because” in outreach emails. Am going to implement this immediately and record the results. Also loved the first tip about finding dead links on Wikipedia. In fact, I’m sure this post will spark an arms race for anyone that’s read it so I’m going to get onto that right away hehe!

Anyway, thanks man for all these insights. I’ve been scratching my head recently trying to think of white hat ways I can defeat the black hatters in my new niche and this has given me so many ideas!

Anyway, happy to have helped you find some white hat strategies you can use to beat up on the competition.
Keep me posted on how adding “because” and the Wikipedia BLB technique works out for you, Richard.

This list is great, thank you so much for posting!
Not only are the tactics creative and unique, but you did an excellent job outlining each with step by step instructions, including great visuals, and providing concrete examples on how to implement the linking tactic. My favorite is probably the Flippa tactic. Amazing for pulling information on how other webmasters were able to acquire links, etc. Thanks again!

Totally agree with you on this one. It is a common trait I guess. Tim Ferris said he had disclosed everything about how he got to where he is right now and anyone who wants to be at his place just need to read and follow but hardly anyone practices it but lets not bitter the mood with these thoughts 🙂

Brian,
You hit a grand slam with this great article. I have learned a bunch of new techniques. Thank you so much for the work you put into it. I’m going to share it out to my followers because it is truly helpful and insightful.

Thanks Brain, these tips are useful. The key thing with most of the tips that you provided is that it will take time and most people want to have more traffic, but they do not want to do the work and put in the time. However, if you put in the word and you do a quality job then it will work out. I think that is the overall strategies that a lot of SEOs have to do today is just to take the time and figure out quality strategies.

Rocking as always. I am also big fan of Alltop which is really great resource to discover engaging keywords and topics, but reverse engineering for the links saturated on page 3-6 is sounds new & interesting. will definitely go for this in coming week.

Hi Brian, Just wanted to say thanks for another great read. The options are all very helpful and some slightly easier to do than others but as always its trial and error starting with the ones that suit you most. Thanks again.

Awesome post Brian! Hands down…sometimes I wonder how do you get so much link building ideas.

We often see posts on how to get blog topic ideas or ideas on creating visuals but nobody ever talked about new link building ideas. The ways you showed here some are absolutely unheard to me. You know what I think you should write a post on how to get your own link building ideas…where to start…how to proceed…how do I know it’s full proof…it surely comes with lots of experiments…but the point is starting…….I know sounds weird but I know you will come up with something 🙂

I love the idea to offer that as a service. It’s also good for clients because it establishes relationships
really, really quickly with other people in their industry. So it’s not just for links (although you’ll get a lot of those too).

As a matter of fact I just forwarded it to one of my VA’s to source the top websites, blogs, etc in my niche and let him contact them to see how much time it will require, I’m really at the low end cost/budget wise so I have to do it through cheap VA’s.

Just curious, when you do it for clients do they create an email for you that you can mail from their name or do you mail from out your own company?

I’m pretty sure this is one of the best posts I’ve read in a while. No BS – straight to the point.
To add on to your flippa idea, look at the domain-only section. Chances are when a domain is for sale, or after it has sold, file structures have changes, pages have died. Great chance to do some broken link building 🙂

Read…picked up jaw from the floor…read again…shook my head and smiled…bookmarked and now reading again! Brian, you’re by far the best SEO guy on the planet and a nice decent bloke as well. I love these gems you post every so often and looking forward to your next online course.

Holy crap you’re a legend Brian.. You’re the only SEO who consistently spits out great stuff.

Tip: Along with delicious I search on scoop.it for similar opportunities. If they liked an article related to a year.. say 2013 and you update the resource to 2014 chances are they’ll share it. Kind of a twist on your delicious + sky scraper technique. You don’t even have to make the content much different or better, just updated! Got some fantastic links recently because of it.

I for some reason never thought to use scoop.it for that kind of outreach (just content promo). But it makes perfect sense. And because scoop.it is probably a bit more lively than Delicious these days I imagine it works even better.

Blown. Away. Ridiculous. Fantastic. As always:)
Btw, I was always under the impression that digg and delicious were dying but I’m really mistaken. Your(and Jason’s) thinking is foolproof though. If these guys are already curating content, there’s no reason they wouldn’t want to do more of just that! Seo has become a lot of chasing and pestering…it’s good of you to remind us that there are people out there just waiting to share stuff, too.:)

Good point about Delicious. As another Backlinko reader Christian Sculthorp pointed out in the comments you can use scoop.it the same exact way. And you may have more success there because it’s probably more active than Delicious right now. SEO is still a lot of pestering, but GOOD SEOs pester people that want to be pestered 🙂

So Brian, regarding #16 does that mean that you can never send an inner post link to a main page that’s located on your main nav bar?? I mean it will never count? But those main pages needs the most links…

That second link will still help you because it will pass extra PR to that page. But in terms of anchor text, most of the experiments I’ve seen show that the second link’s anchor text probably doesn’t help. That being said, Google is more sophisticated than when a lot of these came out so they may count both anchors. But to stay on the safe side I recommend adding keywords to navigation links if possible.

You basically had me hooked after you mentioned the Wikipedia dead link technique. The idea of finding dead links and reaching out to the websites that’ve linked there is actually one of the best ideas I’ve heard in a long time. I’ve bookmarked this page for future reference. Thanks.

I like that Brian.
Only improvement I can see if point 14 to find top list of blogs. I’d use a query like:
inurl:best*fitness*blog*2012
intitle:best +fitness blogs
intitle:best ~fitness blogs
I’ll have to try the flippa one ASAP. I had no idea you could do that. Love the wikipedia one too.

These are the best ideas I’ve ever heard. How can you know these kinds of techniques? It is unbelievable! You really are a genius Brian.Your SEO techniques are unique and your effort to write all these information here is amazing! I have a final exam tomorrow, but I read all of the techniques “because” these are simply what we want to hear.

Darn it. More work that will produce great results. Bang goes my evenings. I’m bookmarking this but I ain’t sharing it. Don’t want too many to know even if loads of your followers already do. Great thinking and creativity and thanks for sharing for free Brian.

Brian,
this article is amazing as always.
I especially like the part about using Adwords Ads for title and description tags – it`s very simple yet genius idea, thank you.
I would love to read any on page optimization related articles, could you recommend something really useful?
(I read everything from your and quicksprout blog=))

I wish I could give someone credit for that technique, but it’s something I read back when I first got into SEO so I don’t remember where I read it (probably an internet marketing forum). Actually, I published this on-page SEO guide a few months ago: https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo

Great stuff Brian
I shared it earlier after a quick read through, and have now given it my full attention with a nice pint of real ale 🙂

There’s so much to action in here – but my favourite tip is naming a unique technique or strategy you come up with. If you then build up your online brand, as your site gets more popular you could potentially rank for quite a few if these self- invented keywords.
I’d say ‘keep up the good work’ – but as you so obviously are I’ll simply say ‘thank you’.
Cheers mate!
Loz

Hi Brian,thanks for amazing seo techniques :))))
I have an authority site in Mens Health niche about 100 pages.These Pages have no obls.How is the best way to optimised on page seo this content?Have to begin give some outbound links from each page,or the best practise is to concetrate to specific pages that send links for ranking?….thank you

Seriously man, I appreciate you spending extra time crafting your posts and making them truly valuable for readers like me 🙂

So many blogs out there just write the same old content over and over again that isn’t helpful…thanks for not being like every blog! There’s a lot here to take in, and I bookmarked it to work on some of these things the next couple of days.

Hi Brian,
You’re living GOD of SEO. What you’re sharing is gold stuff. This is one of the best if not the best ever seo techniques that i read in a very long time. I follow a lot of authority seo bloggers but you provide a list these techniques that is new to me.

The one about wikipidea is high on the list of to do. Also, i have a question here. How many add inner pages that we should add in a post so as not to harm our ranking? Does google take into the account of linking of inner pages of our post when they decide to rank our page?

Thanks Jeff! Really glad to hear that you got so much value out of the post.

I usually add around 2-3 links to internal links per post, depending on a) the length of the post and b) what makes sense for that article. Just like with outbound links, internal links (probably) give clues to Google about a page’s relevancy.

Fantastic stuff, as usual, Brian. The First Link Priority Rule is always one that causes me great angst. I often get torn between search engines and usability when it comes to the main navigation bar. And, I’ve never known what the heck to do about the “Home” link. You can hardly target your keywords with that one without it being anything but awkward.

I hear you on that. In my experience, when in doubt, put the user first.

Fortunately, Google puts more weight on the anchor text of external links anyway. So as long as some of your external links have your target anchors, you’re probably OK with a “Home” button. In fact, I’ve ranked homepages with a “Home” anchor text nav button for some seriously competitive terms. So it’s not a make-or-break ranking signal by any means.

brian,
Excellent post I really like the methods you mentioned above for finding keywords (reddit, wikipedia, and facebook) your so right Google Keyword Planner is great for measuring keywords, but it is terrible for Finding keywords!
I also like to use this tool called Google Correlate. It helps you look at keywords that people queried when they searched the keywords you are targeting. Also SEM Rush is pretty pro for sniping competitors keywords.
Thanks!

Glad I’m not alone with my love/hate relationship with the Google Keyword Planner. It’s definitely an awesome tool and SEOs couldn’t live without. But as you said, it’s really not designed to help you find completely new keywords.

Good tip about Google Correlate and SEM Rush. I’ve used them both quite a bit (SEM Rush a lot more obviously) and it’s really cool. I might discuss both of them in a future post.

Awesome info as usual, Brian. Gonna have to go through it a couple of times to digest the info.
I’ve gotten natural ehow links, but they are nofollow, at least in my experience. No SEO value, no referral traffic. I guess it depends on the niche.

Good point about ehow links being nofollow (I didn’t know that). I agree that nofollow links pass zero SEO value.
But as you said, depending on the niche and the popularity of that ehow article, you could get some decent referral traffic from
that link.

Hi Brian,
You’re such a monster of practical and actionable content. This post oozes out your ability and force me to think that you deserve to rank for keyword “backlinks” on the first page. I wish I could clone you!! 😀 Simply awesome stuff.
Keep helping us, the way you always do…
Now, will put these tips into practice and get back to you..

Yesterday I was re doing our process for ideas and alltop was a part of it. Now I have also known it was a bit spammy (some of my grey sites are featured ) but now it seems way too bad. You have places like new York times next to random adsense blog x. Guy kawasaki needs to really start giving some sort of influence ranking or at least culling the total crap ones.

So I gave taking the decision to remove alltop from the process and use searching for x best ‘niche’ blogs. It’s not perfect but Google at the moment is doing a good job of ranking quality publishers near the top.

Great insights there. I’ve noticed the same thing, especially in the SEO category. But like anything it doesn’t make sense to copy and paste the blogs listed in AllTop and call it a day. You obviously need to check them out and make sure they’re worth building relationships with.

But I agree: AllTop should periodically go back and re-review some of the sites that are in there…or make it harder to get listed in the first place.

Brian I hate you! 😀
I was going about my daily traffic generation routine when I open my RSS feed to see what new blog posts have been made on my favorite blogs and I discover this, quite frankly, genius post.

I think I’ll just have a quick read and what ends up happening? You only go and give me tons of new methods that I’d never thought of that I can’t help but try out.

I’ve just spent the last hour on Reddit, Wikipedia and AllTop trying out your tricks instead of doing what I was supposed to be. 😛

Using Wiki for link opportunities via the dead link method was new to me but I always make it one of my first stops for keyword research as you can often find a ton of new keywords and related info you otherwise wouldn’t know,

The expert round up post is a firm favorite of mines as well and as you know you were recently featured in my post “I Asked 8 – What’s The Best Keyword Research Tool?”

It’s one of the most popular posts on the blog so far. It’s a brand new blog yet there’s 11 comments including from some of the experts and 35 social shares.

On a dating niche site I took the ‘ego-bait’ post one step further and had sexy girls perform a dance and strip to revel the names of the major bloggers in my niche written on their bodies. As you can imagine it got a lot of attention from the big players in my niche and my audience and is a little more creative for getting links, shares and traffic.

Remember to make sure you let all the people you features know when it’s posted as they’ll often tell their audience about it which results in floods of traffic.

Thanks for the epic post Bryan. You really do blow me away with your intelligent SEO. I can’t read most SEO blogs I find them bland and boring but you continue to surprise me with ingenious methods of getting top quality links.

Great insights, Stuart. I think you’ll find that the hours-long distraction was worth it 🙂

I really like the ego-bait idea you mentioned here. A bit edgy, but that’s what it takes in some niches. Really creative stuff.

That’s a really good tip: let people know what you mentioned them in a post. It’s so, so basic, but it works. Most influential people are super-busy and may not even realize they’ve been mentioned. A quick “hey, I mentioned you here” goes a long way.

Hey Brian, This article is really really awesome, Seriously you have covered all 21 points which i never read on anywhere over internet. Everyone shares basics but here you have shared awesome info specially that face book keyword research and 1000+ words in a post, and the wiki pedia ideas are really good and helpful. learned many things from this article. keep sharing this kind of info thanks

Hey Brian, I appreciate you for helping us out. I found your tips really helpful, including tip number 20. Find Niche
Specific Link Building Opportunities Using Flippa it’s like ebay for websites. And tip 21. Use Facebook Ads for Keyword Research. Thank you

Thanks Brian, I am excited about building new links to our website using some of your techniques. BTW, I have another Q: What type of ELP would you write for a construction company. I am stuck what to write about. We work with both home owners on home improvements and on comercial projects :/

Each and every single tips are really helpful,especially the Facebook ads keyword trick.One thing I would like to mention that this article is too big to read and it may bore readers as well.So I suggest if you break it into part 1 and part 2 you’d get much traffic.
Thanks

Great great stuff thanks. I am trying to use the last tip for facebook keyword suggestions but when I go to the create ad/page likes section, anything I put into that box just tells me “We didn’t recognize what you entered. Please enter the URL for your destination”

Glad you enjoyed it Jason. Hmmm. Not sure why that’s happening. It could be that you’re on the page before the one I’m talking about here. Just put any URL in that box and you’ll go to the page where you can find interests and keywords.

OMG what an amazing post, you are so generous with your knowledge and time. I particularly liked No.12 and try to employ that tactic with my website. I see you followed No.15 in writing this tremendous post! I have you bookmarked and will be coming back here often. Glad I’ve met you and I think you’re going to be a great mentor in my future SEO.

Hey Brian… You actually put so much information on your single post only which covers actually all seo techniques which are working like a sure shot bullet for seo specialists.
I think If I follow all mentioned describe seo tips then no one can stop me to become successful in seo for my blog. Thanks for your amazing work.

This truly amazing and I’m gonna share this with like minded people. I loved the part about flippa. What a great source to get ideas. Building links tends to be the hardest to do, but a few good quality links is all you need now a days to get ranked. I currently rank for a very high volume keyword with only 5 links all with pr 3,4 and good DA and PA. Good links are hard to get but you only need a few which is encouraging! Props for this post!
James

That’s very true, Francois: the best keywords are those that the Google Keyword Planner won’t show you. You need to basically find out where your target market hangs out and see what words and phrases they tend to use 🙂

I was waiting, waiting, waiting for the email from backlinko.
Wow Now I know where it was! That is a huge effort, heaps of ideas that seem so obvious. But sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Hi.
This was a amazing article. First of all i would like to appreciate the effort that has been put into writing this. Every point is supported by lots of pics making it quire graphical and easy to understand. Moreover all the points mentioned were quite awesome and helpful.

After you find the dead link you want to reach out to the sites that link to the dead link. Let them know they have a broken
link on their site and offer a resource on your site as a replacement. Sometimes — if the dead resource
has enough links — it’s worth re-creating it on your site just for broken link building.

Love this post!
#7 has been in my aresenal a while, we do it for every piece of content we create.
#8 is where I start with all clients when SEO consulting.
#16 is interesting because no one really knows about it. Myself and a former colleagu did a test on it about 4 years ago and published our results which conculded what you are saying. Since then I’ve been careful to follow this rule. The only issue is that often times using the exact kw does not “work” for navigation anchor texts. But with a little CSS trickery one can get the code for the nav bar to be lower in the code, prioritizing contextual links. I’ve also seen sites add links to 3-5 specific and important internal pages with keyword rich anchor texts, at the very top of the page in order to get those important internal links to be indexed first.

Great article. In fact I think this single article has more helpful information on increasing website traffic than the entire ” Smart Passive Income” website. Thanks for the premium SEO information for the unbelievable price of free.

This is great info. I know nothing about SEO and trying to learn. My site fell from #1 on google for over 2 years to non existent in a matter of months…. How or why does this happen? My business is soon to be out of business 🙁

Awesome tips to increase traffic traffic on the website. I was looking for some effective tips of link building. I started off with new SEO project and I was a little confused about where to start. Dealing with dead links of wikipedia and finding authoritative sites I found the best. I hope it will work for me.

Thanks for sharing that, Julez. I’ve used it and had good (and bad) results. I’d recommend filtering by metrics that are a bit harder to game like Alexa or PR. Not perfect, but should help eliminate some of the riff raff. It also depends on what you’re giving away. A diamond ring is going to bring in better applicants than a free pen.

I tried using #11 with the domain hunter plus. however domain hunter plus does not seem to work and be able to check the links in google after i have altered the time frame… its stuck at 0 links. the extension works for all other site links though. any idea why?

Hi Brian,
I always admire the way you write. Every article on Backlinko are true gems. Some of the above mention tips I often use for growing traffic to my blogs. While other I will definitely try in future. Thanks.

Hi Dean! I’ve just tried the Wikipedia broken LinkBuilding technique…
I recreated a source and replaced the dead link (2+ years old).
As soon as I saved the page, wiki bot reported my action as “vandalism”.
I recreated the source (even better than the original) and replaced it just like the previous one. It was my first edit but I’ve been a user for almost 5 years.
What might be the reason? Thanks

Not sure, Roberto. Wikipedia has a ton of internal rules that’s I’m not super-familiar with. As I said in the post you’re better off targeting other (non-Wikipedia) sites that are linking to that dead resource.

Hi Brian,
WOW!! This is truly an epic post with so much information on SEO that I’m going to bookmark it and come back to read more. #3,5,6 and 13 are just awesome. Like you said pick one and explore. Love the way you can get keywords that will help you rank.
Thanks so much.
Geri Richmond

This is such an awesome post. Clearly you know your stuff, and I’ve spent the last hour just pouring over (only) the first few ideas you’ve presented here. Thanks so much. I’ll definitely be coming back for more!!

Brian Dean this is a comprehensive article in which you put lots of information. I knew a few of techniques that are normally used in SEO. Some of techniques are totally new for me and next time I will start working on them.

This is definitely an awesome article on SEO, i’ve already tried a couple and it works like a charm. Especiallycon the wikipedia strategies. Also great info on writing 200+ words on youtube videos. All i can say is great stuff and glad to have found this goldmine of SEO information.

Hi Is there any way to tighten up the footprint for the dead wiki links (apart from in title) as im geting relavant results, but also a lot of off topic stuff that coincidently mentions the target phrase in text. Also the [key phrase] is this the same as “keyword” in fot print? cheers, brian, lee

I honestly don’t know of any way to filter out irrelevant results. Unfortunately, it’s the nature of link building in general 🙁
Actually, [key phrase] will only bring up those exact two words (nothing before or after).

Thanks Brian for sharing these points. I was desperately looking for ways to increase search traffic. Although, it is good right now, but I need more. All I was getting was basic SEO techniques which I have pretty much applied but was looking for extensive ones. These are perfect for my requirement. Thanks a bunch!

Wow! This is awesome! Lots of good tips here. I used to do a lot of SEO but stopped when the latest update came out. I’m getting back into the SEO game so this post definitely help out a bunch! Appreciate you for sharing this! Keep it up!

Another question brian.. my blog’s bounce rate is 88%. Its about how to tutorials. People open it and get their desired info and closes it. Is it good for my blog? or i am going to penalized by panda? :-/

Hey Brian,
Excellent post as always my friend 🙂
Just a suggestion, but maybe you could write an article about generating traffic to a brand new blog. As you know, when you start out, you have only a couple posts and very little credibility with other bloggers, also the search engines will take considerable time to be of any benefit initially. Would be interesting to know how Brian Dean approaches that dilemma!

Actually I’ve found that the number of posts you have doesn’t make much of a difference in terms of SEO or recognition. It’s more important
that you have a handful of AWESOME posts. In fact, Backlinko grew from zero to over 50k visitors a month with only 18 posts.

Hey thanks man, you have described all the the techniques to building great backlinks in detailed , the 1, 2, 3, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, and 21 are the must try for anyone, as they are the easier and seems to much effective, gonna try all of them…thanks

This post is extremely helpful to any blogger who want to hit at the top for some keywords or want to rank their pages from last pages to first page. subscribe your emails and will try to keep in your touch. Keep it up Brain 🙂

Hi Brian,
My competitor is market leader from past 4 years, his linki building is mostly links in article directories and link directories. He is adding just 1 link in his articles to homepage without any anchortext. The anchortext is the complete title of his homepage. He isn’t penalized by penguin yet. Why he is on top of the list?

Great post Brian. Quick question. Are these the main link building that u do, or are these in addition to some other link building? For example, on a brand new site do u just start these techniques, or do u do any web2.0 initially and the apply one of these techniques?

Wow very nice article Brian. Perhaps this is one major reason why my site died. I was not paying attention to links. Some of the techniques you mentioned here seems do-able enough for me. I’ll try to do a some of the techniques you mention. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks again Brian, i like what you share but i want to know if theses methods are used also for frensh sites or only for english sites, because, i tried some of them, but didn’t work for me.
Please help.

Most of the strategies will work for French sites, Amina. In some cases (like with Flippa or Tomoson) you’ll need to find an equivalent French site. But the approach behind the strategies work in any country.

Thanks very much for your answer Brian, but for the first technique, i tried to find a dead links for keyword i want ranked, but when i want to edit link and replace it by mine, i didn’t find how it can work.
You said re-create that dead link on your website. I would like to understand on wich page i should put it? Is it on new page or partner page?
Thanks again

I don’t know how i can thank you Brian, you are very gentel.
You reply for all comments.
So i want re-create the resource on wikipedia putting my site. And go to this last insert dead link wich will point to my site on wikipedia. Is it like this the method? and how it works?

Hi Brain,
Thank you so much for give us this latest information about SEO. When i was reading your tips that same time i was trying you tips in second tab of browser. You all tips are right and useful. I think you should post new topic soon about SEO. I am waiting. 🙂

What I really like about you Brian and I know a lot of people have already mentioned it, is – you always provide quality content and these kind of tactics you could simply keep to yourself but you don’t. You genuinely want to go out of your way to help others and I really respect you for that. GOOD WORK!!!

Before declaring Reddit a good place to conduct keyword research, might I remind everyone that Reddit’s user demographic is that of a poorly-educated tween-adolescent who lives with his/her parents, is unemployed and has no money of his/her own.

These are not exactly go-getter types, much less people who may eventually land within the parameters of a given market segment one of the readers of this blog may be targeting. They’ll get by on government assistance and nothing more (except for the ones who discover selling drugs) once their parents kick them out of the house.

That’s a really harsh generalization, Peter. Reddit is one of the top 25 sites in the US, which means it gets a mix of people. The demographic is definitely on the younger side, but I don’t agree that it’s full of unemployed people living in their parent’s basement.

Hi Brian. One more very usefull article for even SEO experts. Basicly ı may say that your 21 SEO techniques are simply awesome. I found the techniques #1 and #9 most valuable. Thank you very much again for the article and the new techniques for me.

I’m confused by this Wikipedia scheme you propose: You find dead links to…do what, exactly? Let webmasters know that their links are broken? Replace them with your own? I’m sorry I just don’t get it. I’ve read that passage several times and its point eludes me. Could you elaborate? What are you hoping to accomplish, exactly? Thanks

Hi Brian, thanks for these amazing tips. It is clear that coming up with the right niche and killer keywords is important. And the SEO techniques that you’ve explained are very valuable, especially these times when shortcuts don’t add value.

Hi,I am reading the blogs from a very long time but after coming to your blog i really enjoyed to know more about SEO tactics.Thanks for providing us this kind of blogs.I will looking forword for more new and interesting blogs.

Hi Brian, I’ve seen one of two of these tips flying around on other blogs, and these (single) tips alone get a lot of love from the respective communities. So this article is fantastic. I think the identification of broken links is a cool technique, whether on Wikipedia or some other website.

hey Brian, I am not a spammer, I read your article, nice work, however, are you sure about optimizing anchor links? This time to prove you that I am no spammer I’ll directly to the Google link. Check this out: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
Your opinion about it? Thanks

oh sorry I was sure you did…I must have had tto many tabs open yesterday and I got confused 🙁
Anyway, care to share an opinion on that?
I got several optimized anchor texts on my sites and no I don’t know if I should remove them immediately. Some are on the menu’ links as well!
Thanks again & Happy Ester!

Hi Brain,
Thanks for sharing these tips. This was the most excellent post I’ve ever read about SEO techniques since months. Broken Link Building Opportunities on Wikipedia is a great tip and would try this definitely.

Brian, like many others on here your insight is refreshing and simple. Question I have is
Ref: Linking on site “main domain” vs spending time to link to top 10 pages of your site.

Meaning. I have over 500 post / pages on site with content. Should I worry about getting links to main domain or worry about getting links to my top 10 pages / post to grow domain authority. Sometimes I feel that I worry only about the main domain and not focus on keyword pages by getting them links from different domains. Any help would be great.

I definitely learned tons of new things from your post. This post is old, but I didn’t get the chance to read all of it earlier. I’m totally amazed that these things actually exist in the SEO field. What I liked most is Dead Links scenario on wikipedia, Flippa thing, Reddit keyword research, and at last, the facebook ad keyword research. Its like facebook is actually being trolled for providing us keywords thinking they are promoting ads.
Thanks!

At first thanks a lot Brian Dean to share a useful and beneficial SEO techniques. I need these types of update many days, at last got that and end of a hard work. I think in the next time you post the modern Google keywords ranking.
Best Regards……

Your Wikipedia Broken Link technique is awesome! I really want to do this but for a novice SEO person like me… ay yay yay 🙁 Doing all SEO inhouse (myself) and this is alot of research. Wish I could Fiverr this bit, LOL! Will take me quite a while but I know it will be worth it in the end. Thanks Brian for giving away such treasure 🙂